Book title Consciousness and the Brain - Deciphering how the brain codes our thoughts (Stanislas Dehaene)
There was a group sharing of books in the support group. I shared the contents in this book, but do not really know what to say.
Hopefully writing my understanding of what I read will help.
The book starts off with ancient pictograms of a sleeping man, with his soul wandering from his body. The author is trying to illustrate how mankind has been curious about the link between and the mind. Since ancient time, there was a belief in soul residing in our bodies, and when the mortal bodies die, the spirit is free to wander about.
The author went on to talk about the French philosopher Descartes postulation of the mind as a nonmaterial substance distinct from the machinery of the bodies.
Modern Science until recently has refrained into studying how the mind works, in particular on consciousness due to the difficulty of objective experiment.
The author, a cognitive scientist, in this book tries to explain the concept of consciousness in terms of conscious awareness, which he terms it as conscious access.
Conscious access as I understand, is the brain processes which allow us to be aware of our senses.
There are two related ideas: Wakefulness (State of being physically awake) and Vigilance (the state of being attentive). These two elements are necessary for the state of consciousness, but the most critical element, as suggested by the author, is the state of being aware(conscious access).
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